It used to be the students that needed a dress code, but now a school district in Arkansas has drafted a formal set of guidelines for it’s teachers.

Listed in the four page document is the new requirement that staff must wear underwear.

Little Rock School District’s new superintendent Dr Dexter Suggs refers to underwear as ‘foundation garments’ in the document.

The guidelines don’t stop there. Some of the other rules include the banishment of spandex leggings and hip-hugging jeans.

Teachers are required to find the happy medium between ‘excessively tight’ pants and those that are ‘sagging’.

Some of the rules seem perfectly reasonable in a school setting – like the banning of clothing which advertises alcohol, drugs or cigarettes.

But others seem over-the-top and obvious.

In addition to underwear requirement, teachers’ hair ‘must be clean, neat and well-groomed’ and shoes ‘must be worn at all times’.

In the letter dressed to the school district’s teachers, Dr Suggs doesn’t cite any particular incident that lead him to believe an official dress code needed to be made.

He only wrote that ‘the district’ believes an ‘appropriately dressed employee is seen as a more suitable role model’.

Dr Suggs and union president Cathy Koehler released the rules at the end of August, but the rules won’t officially be district policy until the 2014-2015 school year to give time for teachers to transition to the new system

Ms Koehler admits that many union members voiced their distaste for the new regulations.